If The Jungle Book wins Best Visual Effects, it will be only the fourth film in Oscar history to win the category as the film's sole nomination. The prior recipients were: 1965's Thunderball, 1987's Innerspace, and 1992's Death Becomes Her.

Wesley Lovell
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin

For the record, many thought we'd get this in 2011, but Streep's Margaret Thatcher overtook Davis' Aibileen at the last moment. This year seems far more likely to pull off the result, but, Magilla is right, hold off till it happens.

The strange thing is, prior to 1997, it happened fairly often -- by my reckoning, 8 times between 1983 and 1993. So, this swooning over biopics is a relatively recent phenomenon.

If, as expected, La La Land wins Best Picture, every Best Picture so far this decade will either be about people-who-actually-lived/events-that-actually-took-place or performers. So far, Django Unchained is the only film this decade outside of those two categories to win more than one award in the "big eight" categories, winning one award each in the supporting acting and screenwriting categories. This year, I am predicting Moonlight will be the second such film to do so, also with one award each in the supporting acting and screenwriting categories.

Braveheart is once again the only Best Picture winner without an Oscar nominated actor in the cast (although it does have Mel Gibson, who has nominations and wins but not for acting). It was tied with Slumdog Millionaire, but Dev Patel's nomination changes that.

"Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good."- Minor Myers, Jr.

I don't know about the Joneses, but Raoul Peck, the former Haitian Minister of Culture, was born in 1953. He has two younger brothers. His father's name was Hebert, so one of his brothers might well be named Hebert. The IMDb. picture purporting to be of the two, however, is inaccurate. Raoul is the one on the right, not the left.

The Coen Brothers and the Sherman Brothers have, of course, been nominated (and won) for the same film in the same year.

Wikipedia has an interesting page on extended family members who've won Oscars from George Clooney, his uncle Jose Ferrer and father-in-law Martin Balsam to Peter Ustinov and his sister-in-law, Angela Lansbury.

The Shearers have the most wins, with 16. The Newmans were nominated the most often, all 91 being for Film Scoring, Arrangement, or Original Song.The Coppolas have the most nominated (9) and winning (7) members.The Hustons were the first three generation family of winners. The others are the Coppolas and, technically, the Farrow/Previn/Allens.

No time to research this, but Paul Corbould and Neil Corbould are brothers and were both nominated for Best Visual Effects this year for different films. There are also two Joneses listed for two different films in Visual Effects, but I have no idea if they are related.

Another pair this year that I am not certain of relation are Documentary Feature co-nominees Hebert Peck and Raoul Peck.

How many times (if any) have brothers been nominated in the same category and how often beyond that has it been achieved for different films?

Wesley Lovell

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin

Mister Tee wrote:My understanding is that August Wilson wrote it as a screenplay sometime prior to his death, and that it sat around unfilmed for years. Rumors have gone around that Tony Kushner actually did some tweaking to it prior to production, but that the work was still essentially Wilson's, so Kushner took a producer credit on the project.

Big Magilla wrote:Besides which Larry Russell actually wrote the score for Limelight, but August Wilson did not write a screenplay for Fences. He wrote the play which was filmed pretty much as he wrote it.

I thought the rule for Adapted Screenplay is that there is only a nomination for who does the adaptation, so, if they play is shot as is, there is no eligible screenwriter nomination.

I thought so, too, but this is all I could find at Oscars.org:

SPECIAL RULES FOR THE WRITING AWARDS

1. An award shall be given for the best achievement in each of two categories:

Adapted Screenplay

Original Screenplay

2. A Reminder List of all eligible screenplays in each category shall be made available along with nominations ballots to all members of the Writers Branch, who shall vote in the order of their preference for not more than five screenplays in each category.

3. The five screenplays in each category receiving the highest number of votes shall become the nominations for final voting for the Writing awards.

5. Final voting for the Writing awards shall be restricted to active and life Academy members.

My understanding is that August Wilson wrote it as a screenplay sometime prior to his death, and that it sat around unfilmed for years. Rumors have gone around that Tony Kushner actually did some tweaking to it prior to production, but that the work was still essentially Wilson's, so Kushner took a producer credit on the project.

Big Magilla wrote:Besides which Larry Russell actually wrote the score for Limelight, but August Wilson did not write a screenplay for Fences. He wrote the play which was filmed pretty much as he wrote it.

If instead of putting his own name on the screenplay for Hamlet and credited it to William Shakespeare, Shakespeare would hold the record at 360 years.

Actually, August Wilson wrote the screenplay well before he died, and had been trying to get it made ever since the early 90s. So the adaptation was done by him.

"Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good."- Minor Myers, Jr.

Big Magilla wrote:Besides which Larry Russell actually wrote the score for Limelight, but August Wilson did not write a screenplay for Fences. He wrote the play which was filmed pretty much as he wrote it.

I thought the rule for Adapted Screenplay is that there is only a nomination for who does the adaptation, so, if they play is shot as is, there is no eligible screenwriter nomination.

I thought so, too, but this is all I could find at Oscars.org:

SPECIAL RULES FOR THE WRITING AWARDS

1. An award shall be given for the best achievement in each of two categories:

Adapted Screenplay

Original Screenplay

2. A Reminder List of all eligible screenplays in each category shall be made available along with nominations ballots to all members of the Writers Branch, who shall vote in the order of their preference for not more than five screenplays in each category.

3. The five screenplays in each category receiving the highest number of votes shall become the nominations for final voting for the Writing awards.

Big Magilla wrote:Besides which Larry Russell actually wrote the score for Limelight, but August Wilson did not write a screenplay for Fences. He wrote the play which was filmed pretty much as he wrote it.

I thought the rule for Adapted Screenplay is that there is only a nomination for who does the adaptation, so, if they play is shot as is, there is no eligible screenwriter nomination.